On the esplanade of Beaubourg, a street trader tends DVDs to visitors who rush into the museum. “Enjoy the videos in the collection of the Pompidou Center for a euro.” Photocopied sleeves and cheap price, the stall is full of fakes, but as a Hollywood blockbuster, it offers movies from the Wooster Group, Michael Snow Thomas Hirschhorn or Jordi Colomer. The dealer, wearing a badge illustrated with an inverted C, copyleft symbol (1), in contrast to C copyright, said working for IP production, which would have all the necessary permissions.

“Disseminate”. The shop lies at the heart of smuggling Centre Pompidou. Under a new series “Voir/revoir”, the institution gives carte blanche to artists to explore the collection and the museum’s audiovisual archives. First guest, Tania Bruguera, visual artist, filmmaker, performer born in 1968 in Cuba, wanted to deal with “IP hijacking” the issue of access to these works. In particular, video art, whose distribution is dependent on these institutions.

The artist has contacted by mail 100 artists from the collection “new media” to ask them if they agreed that pirated copies of their works are sold around Beaubourg by students and vendors, benefiting the latter, the purpose of disseminating democracy. “Originally, the artists used the medium of video just because it was easy to reproduce and therefore to spread,” explains Tania Bruguera. Those who accepted this deal are presented in the exhibition, held at Forum 1, with the approval of the Centre Pompidou, who nevertheless accepts any responsibility for the sale of copies. Among the artists contacted, 63 responded positively, including Martin Le Chevallier. He agreed to four interactive artworks: “I do not have any problem, no room is involved in limited and, if they are not is that I share the same democratic concerns.”

Bulk. “Intellectual property (IP) is at the heart of debates in the era of open source culture,” says Tania Bruguera, who wanted to confront these issues and artists to encourage them to take a stand. What they did in a letter posted on the walls. Negative responses anonymized also argued: fear of losing control of his work, poor copy quality, criticism of pseudo-subversive action. Bruguera chooses to present works in a bad device, highlighting the conditions for submission of video art inconvenient. In bulk, in a dim light, surrounded by piles of cardboard and pallets, stacked on shelves, television broadcast in-time videos, in a hubbub of images and sounds interwoven, without contextualization.

In addition, a cinema with red carpet, where videos are projected on the big screen. But again, access is blocked and the lack of chairs that prevents settles comfortably. Between storage and sacralization, the measure ensures that you can not watch movies and inciting viewers to acquire copies sold in the street and watching DVDs at home. “Despite efforts to attract wider audiences, video art is a medium that continues to suffer from the idea that the museum was both a transit and a place of cultural preservation “suggests the performer. This exhibition-action, which will result in a digital book free download (2) is also a practical application of an essay published in Artforum magazine this summer, where she stigmatized the lack of risk-taking and cultural institutions ” will transform the instability of the art in a serene experience. She said to dream of a museum “which would be closer to the Internet, open source and culture encyclopedia.”

The vendors will drag, meanwhile, for a week near the fountain, the library of Beaubourg, as well as one of the subway lines.

(1) The copyleft is the opportunity given by the author of a paper submitted to the copyright to copy, use, modify or distribute his work.